by Sean Grigsby
Naveena turned around. “Let’s go.”
“What about that thing we have to talk to Donahue about?” I asked.
“Well, he’ll be in the foyer, won’t he?”
Chapter 25
Yolanda gave me a walker to use until I was able to properly move. Along with the old man robe I wore, it really crapped on the wonder of my newly formed body.
Naveena followed beside me as we entered the foyer. A few smoke eaters I hadn’t met waited around, talking to Donahue.
I hobbled toward the chief, but Naveena cut me off.
“Chief,” she said. “We need to tell you something important.”
Donahue turned and looked at me like I was a squished bug on the windshield. “It can wait.”
“This is related to what you and I were talking about before I left,” I said.
Afu and Williams walked in wearing their dress greens, making me feel like the crazy, underdressed uncle at a family reunion.
“After this,” Donahue told me.
“But Chief–”
“Damn it, Brannigan, get in line with Williams and Kekoa, and we’ll talk for as long as you want afterward.”
Smoke eaters and propellerheads filled the foyer. We were gathered here for something, but all I knew was that I was the old bastard with a robe and a walker.
Sighing, I got in line beside Williams, who looked me over and snorted, trying to hold in laughter.
I leaned toward her to whisper. “Does this mean we’re cool? About the Cedar Point thing?”
She play-punched me in the arm. I took that as a maybe.
Sergeant Puck entered last with a box in her hands.
“All right, everybody,” Chief Donahue said, raising an arm in the air. “This is a little impromptu, since we weren’t expecting our recruits to be back from Canada so early.”
More than a few eyes fell on me.
“But I want to officially open the proceedings to accept our new brothers and sister into the fold. If Sergeant Puck approves of them, of course.” Donahue turned to Puck.
Sucking on her teeth, Puck nodded.
This was a graduation? I didn’t feel like I had learned a thing, besides a few different types of dragons and the different ways they can kill you.
Not only underdressed, but also underwhelmed.
Looking back at my time in the fire academy, even with all the tests and training evolutions, I’d felt the same way at that graduation.
Donahue said, “Tamerica Williams.”
I had never known what Williams’ first name was until that moment. She stepped forward from our line.
“Sergeant Puck,” Donahue said, “what is your recommendation for this recruit.”
“Acceptance,” Puck said.
What was the point of all this? Donahue had told me not long ago about the lack of smoke eaters and that the only way out was in a box. We were already “accepted”. This was a waste of time.
Donahue opened the box in Puck’s hands and took out a badge. He pinned it onto Williams’ shirt and slapped it with his palm. “You were born a smoke eater. Welcome to your calling.”
I’d never seen Williams smile so big. She stepped back in line as those around us applauded.
“Afu Kekoa,” Donahue called next.
My big buddy stepped up, puffing out his chest. He’d tied his hair in a bun for the occasion.
Puck said, “Accepted.”
Donahue repeated the same badge-adorning and meaningful words as he had with Williams.
Looking at me, Chief D sighed deeply. That just made me smile.
“Cole Brannigan, step forward.”
I wobbled against my walker, ignoring the muffled laughter behind me. My legs were getting better, but not fast enough.
Donahue raised an eyebrow at Puck. “Do you accept this recruit?”
I wanted them to just get on with it. Yep, we’re all accepted and ready to slice scaly heads and level orphanages to the ground. Sherry was waiting for me, and I was eager to use my new musculature to release some pent-up sexual energy, and then, after fully recovering, go shove a foot up Mayor Rogola’s ass and see him locked up for the rest of his life, and then maybe we could go find us a three-headed dragon before anybody else had to die.
But, you know, let’s have a low-key graduation first.
“I wish I could accept him,” Puck answered. “But I can’t.”
The hell?
“Is that your answer?” Donahue said.
Puck nodded, raising her eyebrows in a, “Yeah, I meant it, motherfucker!” kind of way.
I spoke so every smoke eater and propellerhead could hear me. “Mayor Rogola bought a wraith-catcher and is using it to draw dragons to burn down houses. I don’t know why. Real estate fraud, maybe. Personal revenge. He’s the reason my house is gone and why a bunch of firefighters and smoke eaters are dead. Just thought you should know before I hit the door and kick his ass without your help.”
Puck and Donahue both stood with their mouths wide open. I turned to Naveena, who shrugged. A few of the crowd mumbled among themselves.
Donahue spoke first. “I was going to say that we’ll accept Brannigan’s old ass anyway.”
He walked over with a badge lying in his palm and showed it to me. On the badge, a dragon spread its wings over a Maltese cross bearing two crossed lances behind the great seal of the state of Ohio. Attaching it to my robe, Donahue patted it hard, enough to where I winced.
“You and Naveena,” Donahue spoke low. “In my office. Now.” He turned to the others. “OK, everybody. Back to work.”
Donahue told Naveena to follow him, and I hobbled behind with my walker. The chief stood outside his door, smiling courteously at us.
That worried me.
When Naveena and I were seated, Donahue closed the door and sat very slowly into his chair. Then he let loose. “What is wrong with you, Brannigan? You think you’re funny, spreading some lies around about the mayor? Just because you’ve got a vendetta against him doesn’t give you the right to drag dead smokies into your game and try to get everybody else to go along with your nonsense!”
“He’s telling the truth,” Naveena said, stopping Donahue short as he took a breath to go at me again.
“He… what?”
“Brannigan is telling the truth. I heard it with my own ears. Yūrei Corporation sold Rogola some kind of technology to catch wraiths.”
“And then they sacrificed a girl to a scaly,” I whispered. It was too unbearable to say any louder.
Donahue stopped talking. He rubbed his chin a few times, as if he was petting a cat, then he bent down to a drawer in his desk and pulled out a bottle of vodka. Without offering either Naveena or myself any booze, he cracked the bottle open and swallowed for at least six seconds.
“Damn, Chief,” I said.
Donahue leaned forward and stared at his bottle, saying more to himself, “The Canucks sacrificed someone?” He drank another swig. “This would be a lot easier if you were full of it, Brannigan.”
“I can’t argue with you there,” I said. “But what are we going to do about it?”
“Do you have any real evidence, anything on paper, electronic receipts?”
I looked at Naveena. She sighed and shook her head.
“I’ll call Hamdel,” Chief said. “But I’m thinking that’s going to be tough, since we’re on their ban list. Might not even get through. We have to get the police involved. We’re allowed certain bends in the law, but we can’t storm city hall and kidnap the mayor for something we don’t have much evidence on.”
“Why don’t we just go straight to the horse’s mouth and ask him ourselves?” Naveena said.
“Go interrogate him?”
She nodded.
“I have to see my wife,” I said.
Sherry thought I was still in Canada. But it would be nice to surprise her.
Donahue stood up from his seat. “No, no. Brannigan, we need to see the mayor first. Then I’d like to
take you to your wife myself. She might be… unsettled by your appearance. The, uh, new body. I had her put into temporary housing until you two are able to find something more suitable. How soon can you be ready to go?”
I eyed Donahue for a few seconds, watching his breathing grow shorter and quicker. He was hiding something. That body language book had never let me down.
“Thirty minutes should be fine,” I said.
“I’ll meet you out front.”
I was about halfway to my dorm when I found Williams. “I need you to sneak me out of here.”
“What? Why?”
“Something is up with Donahue. I can smell fishy-rat bullshit better than most, and I need to see my wife.”
Williams turned to look down the hall. “Well, OK. I don’t know what’s going on, but hurry up and get dressed.”
“No, Donahue will be looking for us. Just get me out of here. You know where my wife might be?”
“The department has a building they use to house families who’ve lost their homes to dragons. She’s probably there.”
I threw my walker away and limped toward the apparatus bay. “Then let’s get out of here.”
The temporary housing building stood on the north end of Parthenon City, not too far from downtown. Vehicles crammed the parking lot, floating in stasis, while a bunch of kids darted around them, playing tag. Williams pulled up to the front.
“You want me to come up with you?” Williams asked.
I grinned at her. “I have your number if I need you. Thanks for the ride.”
Before I closed the door, Williams said, “Hey, Brannigan?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you always look for ways to get into trouble?”
“I think it just comes naturally.” I closed the door and waved as she drove off.
I had to ask four different people – all of them looked at me like I was a crazy, homeless crack head – but I finally found out that Sherry was staying on the eighth floor. I stopped at the door, having to take a minute until my head stopped spinning.
Damn blue, chemical shit.
After a few of my hurried knocks, Sherry cracked the door. When she saw me, she swung it wide and greeted me with a fist to the arm.
“Ouch!” I screamed.
She followed the punch up by grabbing my robe’s collar and slamming her lips into mine. Jumping, she wrapped her legs around my waist, and we stumbled into the apartment.
I had no sense of direction with my wife glued to my face, but somehow we found our way to the bedroom.
One time, back when Sherry and I were still dating, we had sex six times in seven hours. After that, especially after getting married, we’d averaged around one to two times a month. Now, I don’t know if it was my new muscles, or the fact that we hadn’t been happily alone together in a long time, but we beat our original record.
By a lot.
The apartment was a small studio with walls so thin, the whole building probably heard us going at it. We didn’t even speak.
After the last round, lying on our backs and catching our breath, I asked, “Want to go again?”
“I… can’t.”
“Slacker.”
“I… must be dreaming.”
Smiling, I took a breath and hummed my approval.
“I thought you were dead,” she said.
I sat up. “What? I was just hurt and had to go on an assignment. Donahue said he told you.”
“Assignment?” Sherry looked like she was going to flip out, but shook it away for later. “Your chief told me a dragon killed you.” She scrunched her eyebrows together. “I’ve been crying for days.”
I jumped out of bed. “I’m going to kill him.”
“He said some people might come by asking questions about you, but your death and dismemberment insurance was paying for this room and a check would come for me to get a new house. Said we couldn’t have a funeral until the investigation was through. I was too depressed to question it.”
“Well, did anybody come around asking about me?”
Sherry shook her head.
I searched the room for some clothes. Kenji was asleep, charging beside the dresser. I found a few plain shirts and shorts. I’d have to keep using the slippers Yolanda gave me.
“You’re leaving?” Sherry asked, gripping the covers around her.
“I’ve got to kick a few asses, and then I’ll be back to repeat what we just did. OK?”
“It’s not your job to save the world, you know.”
“Yes, it is.” I grabbed the holoreader near the kitchen and asked Naveena to come pick me up. Told her it was important. She said it always was with me.
When I hung up, Sherry was crying and squeezing the life out of her pillow. “Don’t die on me again.”
I sat on the bed and kissed her. “You remember how you always told me I could talk to you, if I ever saw something on the job that I couldn’t shake?”
She nodded.
“Well, I never did when I should have. I used to keep a lot inside. Figured telling you about all of it would just make it worse. If I couldn’t protect them, I could at least protect you from knowing about it. I know that’s stupid.”
Sherry held my hand, cool against my heat.
I said, “This assignment I went on, I saw something that’s really gnawing at me.”
“You can tell me. Whatever it is.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Not yet. Not until I’ve crossed some things off my list.”
“That’s not good, Cole. You can’t keep burying that stuff.”
I touched her cheek. “I’ll give the chief an extra punch for you.”
We held each other in silence for a while, and then I left without any weakness in my muscles.
Chapter 26
“So you think Donahue is in league with Mayor Rogola?” Naveena asked as Renfro drove us toward city hall.
Naveena had filled her partner in on everything that had happened. He was surprisingly cool with it all.
“No, but he told my wife I was dead,” I said. “That he’s meeting with Rogola right now just gives me two birds for my one stone.”
Naveena had called to see if Donahue was still waiting for me at headquarters, but they’d told her he’d gone to city hall.
“You said he was going to make it seem like you were one of the smokies that died,” Naveena said. “Maybe he thought it would be better if your wife thought so, too.”
The buildings zipped by in a blur.
“Well, either way,” I said, “it was a shitty thing to do, and I’m kicking his ass.”
“Let me handle it, Brannigan,” said Naveena.
Renfro shook his head. “Just because you can’t get fired doesn’t mean you can’t get in trouble for attacking a superior. We do have dungeons below headquarters, you know.”
“What would you do, Renfro?” I asked.
He drove for a few more seconds before answering, “Yeah, I guess I would kick his ass, too.”
When the cannon truck pulled up to city hall, I jumped out before the wheels had stopped spinning. Naveena chased after me. Even in my shitty foam slippers, I was putting her to shame as my legs found their full strength. I was never that fast before my fall, at least not since I was seventeen.
“Wait, Brannigan!” Naveena shouted behind me.
Wasn’t gonna happen.
The security droids moved in when I burst through the front doors, but weren’t fast enough. I passed by the elevator and randomly hit a button inside, sending it up so Naveena would have to take the stairs like me.
I hadn’t even broken a sweat when I entered the floor to the mayor’s office. His receptionist was in the middle of blowing a big red bubble I popped with a finger as I passed.
“Hey!” She jumped back. “You can’t go in there!”
“Watch me.”
The door hit Jenkins when I barged in. He crawled along the floor grabbing for the holoreader he’d dropped. Chief Donahue sat across fr
om Rogola, both of them staring at me and frowning. I aimed my fist for the nearest man.
“Brannigan,” was all Donahue was able to get out before my knuckles met his jaw. He fell sideways into Rogola’s desk.
“I heard you were dead,” the mayor said.
When he chuckled, I lifted a chair.
“Stop, Brannigan!” Naveena shouted as she entered the office.
I chucked the chair. Mayor Rogola was still smiling as it left my hands and flew right through his head, briefly sending his image into a flurry of static before it reformed into a belly-laughing simulation.
Fucking holograms.
“Where are you?” I said through gritted teeth. My pulse throbbed from the side of my neck.
“You honestly think I would risk coming down there, with thugs like you, and all the other creepy crawlies that plague our land.” Rogola laughed again. “Jenkins, get security to see these losers out of here.”
The mayor’s assistant scrambled to his feet and left the room. From where I stood, I saw that the back of the shī statues’ heads held lenses that projected Rogola’s image. Naveena ran over and helped Donahue onto his feet.
“What the hell!?” Donahue said, but I didn’t know if it was from me punching him or that he hadn’t known he’d been conversing with a hologram.
“I’m going to find you,” I told Rogola. “This isn’t over.”
The mayor never budged – wherever he actually sat. “Yes, it is. All of you are over.”
Thuds sounded against the floor, along with metallic clanking. Behind us, droids stomped into the office. One grabbed Naveena.
“Don’t resist,” the droid said.
“Get off of me.” She kicked at the metal man’s groin, but it had no effect.
The robot lifted her like she was a five year-old throwing a fit. “Don’t resist.”
Two others entered and came for me next. I decided not to resist. If Naveena couldn’t take down one of these bastards, I sure as hell couldn’t, even with a fresh body. They hefted all three of us out of the office one by one.
“Why did you punch me?” Donahue asked as we waited, crammed inside the elevator.
I glared at him, which couldn’t have looked that threatening in the embrace of a robot. “You told my wife I was dead.”